07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  Either way, it livened up the hike. One of the rarely considered benefits of stereoscopic vision was the fact that it allowed for depth perception. He’d found out the hard way while running around in that stupid eye patch—one of the reasons why he’d discarded it three days earlier than prescribed by Doc Fraiser. His shins had been unable to stand the strain.

  Right now, his shins didn’t worry him. What did worry him was being funneled through the canyon that led to the gate. That meaningful pause seemed to preclude the literal meaning of home, which left a euphemism popular among romantic novelists—along with eternal rest. Odds were that he and Jack would be lined up against the cliff for a quaint old execution by firing squad—blindfold unnecessary in Dr. Jackson’s case—with subsequent disposal of their remains through the Stargate.

  What do you mean, General Hammond? They gated back three days ago.

  The thought that this might be precisely what had happened to Sam and Teal’c and Janet made him sick. Only sheer, undiluted fury at the prospect of never finding out why kept the churning in his gut at bay. It wasn’t just scientific curiosity. Daniel wanted to know whom to haunt.

  The goons prodded them around a narrow bend, and suddenly the rock walls parted and opened out into the crater.

  “Keep going,” advised Mr. Poletti.

  More prodding, but strangely enough not toward the cliff but toward the gate. One of the Marines broke into a trot, overtook, and headed for the DHD. He made no attempt to conceal the address he was dialing. He didn’t need to. Daniel himself had dialed it countless times over the years.

  Earth.

  He heard Jack’s sigh of disbelief, seconded the motion, and wondered how General Hammond would respond to having them returned in this not quite factory-sealed condition. With a decidedly undiplomatic note of protest, Daniel assumed. The thought was cut off by the whoosh of the event horizon, and then the wormhole established, drilling a clear blue circle into murky air.

  “In your own time, gentlemen,” said Poletti.

  “You’ll have to uncuff me,” Jack muttered. “I need to enter the IDC.”

  “I’ll do the honors.” Poletti smirked and started punching numbers into the transmitter on his wrist.

  So this was how it’d go. No blindfolds and last cigarettes. Just bugs on the windshield, and next time Sergeant Siler cleaned the iris, he’d wipe off some familiar-looking subatomic particles. Daniel never for a moment believed that Poletti had entered a valid code.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that five of the goons had formed a semi-circle behind him and Jack, discouraging any foolhardy notions such as running. Out front, Poletti had climbed the dais.

  “Bon voyage, gentlemen,” he brayed.

  Jack started walking. Evidently he wasn’t immune to niceties of phrasing either. If he thought they were going home, he’d leave last, after seeing his one-man-team safely through the wormhole. Daniel caught up with him in front of the event horizon.

  “Stop jostling for pole position,” he hissed.

  “They say it hardly hurts at all,” Jack hissed back.

  “Who says?”

  “The particles.” And then Jack was gone.

  Two seconds later Daniel concluded that the particles were lying through their teeth. But conscious thought and sensation folded into merciful black, until he shot from the far end of the wormhole, screaming and in free fall. Images took on a snapshot quality; an oppressive flood of green, age-old masonry, the still figure sprawled between ferns below. He hit the ground hard, though moss and mud cushioned most of the impact.

  The Hereafter didn’t exactly live up to the advertising. Then again, there always was the possibility that he wasn’t quite dead yet.

  Groaning, he rolled over and struggled to his knees. The gymnastics shook loose an avalanche of throbs that felt like it wanted to exit his head through his left eye. He ignored it and shuffled over to Jack who seemed to be coming round, his face bone-white under a mudpack.

  “Love what they’ve done with the gate room.” Jack blinked up at the canopy. “Where the hell are we? Mato Grosso?”

  “Doesn’t look like Brazil to me.” Daniel sniffed, squinting at the blur of a monumental structure behind them. High in the wall, the gate formed the third eye in a stone-carved mask that placidly gazed down at him. “My money’s on Angkor Wat.”

  “What encore?”

  “You know. The Khmer temples in Cambodia.”

  “Didn’t know they kept a Stargate there.”

  “Uh, they don’t, I guess. If they did, somebody’d have found it by now.” Glancing at fuzzy walls and reliefs again, Daniel said, “This is amazing. We definitely need to check out this place. It could—”

  “Daniel!”

  “Hmm?”

  “We don’t know where we are, we’re hogtied, we’ve got no weapons or supplies, and we—Holy buckets!” Jack had finally turned his head to get a spectacular view of Daniel’s face. “You know, you’re… Nah, I won’t say it.”

  “Won’t say what?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Jack?”

  “I’m not gonna say you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Very funny.”

  “That’s why I didn’t say it.” He winced. “Can you see anything at all?”

  “Not out of the left eye.”

  “Crap.”

  Accompanied by a lurid selection of curses, Jack maneuvered himself onto his side, facing away from Daniel. Who was watching the performance, knowing that it had to hurt like merry hell and wishing he could make himself useful.

  “You need a doctor,” he offered lamely.

  “I’ll consult the first medicine man who’s got his shingle out.” Jack wiggled his fingers. “Chew through the flex.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No.”

  Sighing, Daniel dropped into a patch of mud and scooted down until his teeth were at a level with Jack’s wrists. “Fart and I’ll kill you!”

  There was no reply, and Daniel resigned himself. Bits of his face that desperately wanted to be left alone were chafing against Jack’s arms, and the plastic was no real winner for taste and stuck between his teeth. Jack kept quiet. He’d either passed out again or he was brooding.

  Daniel stopped and sat up, trying to relax his shoulders. The sun had crept over the treetops and onto their little patch of forest floor. It occurred to him that they’d been cheated out of a night and some much-needed sleep.

  “I didn’t fart!” So Jack had been brooding. “Keep going!”

  “How about you entertain me by telling me why you retired?”

  “You know why. You were there.”

  If there’d ever been a moment when Daniel wanted to cross his arms this was it. “Don’t bullshit me. You quit—which isn’t exactly a specialty of yours. So what’s going on?”

  “Daniel, I—”

  “Spill it, Jack. I mean it.”

  Jack shifted over a little further, staring at a lump of moss. “This last year—”

  “You mean the one when you were too busy being the alpha male to see daylight?” And Daniel had risen to the bait every damn time, until their usual banter deteriorated into personal insults. “Sorry. Just gag me.”

  “Can’t. I need you.”

  “Oh right. The flex.”

  “What else?” O’Neillese for the friendship’s still there. Twisted and battered and bent out of shape, but still a friendship. Solid foundations.

  “What about this last year?” Daniel prodded.

  “You mean apart from the fact that I was prepared to blow up a spaceship with you in it? Or that I shot to kill when I shot Carter? Or that I left Teal’c to get his matrix stored in the gate? Notice a pattern? Too many bad calls, Daniel. The only reason why any of you’s still around is that I got lucky each time. I can’t afford to rely on that. You can’t. The exercise sent up a red flag. That’s what happens when luck runs out, Daniel.” His fingers balled into tight fists. “The other da
y, when I shot that robot—”

  “She was sentient, Jack.”

  “When I shot Reese? I shot her because I couldn’t gamble. I was scared stiff of luck running out. I’ve lost too many people already, and so help me, I’m not going to lose any more.”

  You stupid son of a bitch!

  Daniel grimaced. “Look,” he said at last, “for what it’s worth, I’ve always been convinced—still am—that, if I buy it out here, it won’t be because you’re there but because you’re not. You’ve pulled our asses out of the fire more times than I care to remember and long may you continue to do so. Because I have every intention of living to a ripe old age. and I’m counting on you to keep that little fancy of mine viable.”

  “Gee! Thanks, Daniel.” Jack sounded raw, but the attitude was encouraging. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Daniel grinned. “Try stretching the flex. It might pop.”

  “You sneaky, underhand, devious little… You mean there was no reason for me to—”

  “I didn’t say that. I said it might pop. So it might still need some nibbling.”

  “And you might just stay cuffed!” growled Jack and did as he was told.

  The flex popped. Ten minutes later, Daniel’s hands were free, too. Rubbing his wrists, he looked for a doorway that would lead to the interior of the ruins, but all he could see was the gaping mouth of the stone face that held the Stargate. Not likely, despite the stone tongue that lolled out into the clearing like an entrance ramp. Besides, the maw stank of feces and God knew what else, and even Daniel’s investigative fervor had limits. He began trailing the wall into the forest, noticing for the first time that the noises you’d expect in a jungle were absent. Except for an unnerving, insistent buzz. Following the sound, he rounded a huge tree and froze, bile rising in his throat. So much for peace and quiet.

  From somewhere behind him drifted shouts. “Daniel! Wait up! I can’t find the”—Jack came trotting around the bole and ground to a dead halt—“DHD…”

  Clouds of flies dancing around it, the body hung suspended from a protrusion in the temple wall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Okay, sirs. That’s it for today. As you can tell from your schedule, the role play exercise is slotted first thing tomorrow morning, so you might wanna go over your notes tonight. Thank you all, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” The hollow-chested lecturer, a warrant officer in academic uniform—baggy chinos, checked shirt, and beige corduroy jacket—shuffled down from the dais in front of the projection screen and immediately was mobbed by a gang of teacher’s pets.

  Like high school, George Hammond thought in disgust. Except, he himself had never hung around after class. He’d been too busy trying to set new records for the run between classroom and bleachers. Nothing to do with baseball. More to do with Betty Mae Turner. He smiled briefly—Betty Mae had ended up marrying one of the teacher’s pets and produced a houseful of organ-pipe offspring.

  However, this wasn’t high school and more’s the pity. If it were, or if he had more of Jack O’Neill’s blithe disregard for institutional authority, he’d have carved This sucks! into the desk with a penknife. As it was, he simply gathered his—unused—notepad and sidled out of the row of seats and toward the exit. Below, the eager beavers were still wooing the lecturer, who was lapping it up. Presumably it was more attention than the guy otherwise got in a year.

  Good for him. And good for Psych Ops. If they were striving to imbue their existence with some meaning, that was a laudable undertaking and all very well with Major General Hammond. However, he signally failed to understand why he should have to be involved in the ego salving. He had better things to do. More urgent things. That aside, a little advance warning might have been nice. The order for Hammond to participate in this extravaganza for general staff had landed on his desk yesterday morning.

  The three-day seminar at Boiling AFB (Enhanced Understanding of Leadership and Dealing with Subordinates) seemed to be part of some obscure drive toward fluffier armed forces, and it was as redundant as a pair of left shoes. A lot of wishy-washy psycho-babble that had nothing whatsoever to do with real life. Real life was fifty percent of SG-1 and Dr. Fraiser missing.

  Hammond stormed down the corridor, dodging clumps of chatting people. His interest in discussing this afternoon’s lecture (Voluntary Separation and How to Handle It) was strictly limited. Besides, his personal method (Wait Till Half a Team Disappears and See How Fast Their CO Bounces Back) wouldn’t meet with the attendees’ approval. As he rattled down the stairs he thought he heard somebody hollering his name, opted for temporary deafness, and ducked out the door. He needed to contact the SGC and check if there were any news, but he didn’t want to make the call from Boiling. He had friends elsewhere whose phones would be secure.

  Outside, the wind was driving sheets of rain across the lawn. The weather suited his mood. Head bowed and shoulders hunched, he hurried along the access road and through the main gate, guessing that it would take him at least half an hour to find a taxi at this time of day. He’d guessed wrong. Stepping out onto McDill Boulevard, he saw a yellow cab tearing toward him, and the driver actually responded to his wave. The cab pulled over, and Hammond, eager to get out of the rain, hopped in before it’d even screeched to a complete standstill.

  “Andrews Air Force Base,” he said, in a tone proven to discourage any outbursts of verbal diarrhea on the part of cabbies.

  Apparently it worked. “Okay,” said the driver and left it at that.

  It took Hammond exactly five minutes to realize that the cabby’s reticence wasn’t based on sensitivity. Instead of driving east into central Washington, the cab sped into the maze of roads along the river, weaving in and out of traffic and steadily heading north toward Interstate 66.

  “Hey!” He rapped against the glass partition. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  The cabby, bearded and in a brown, wooly Afghan hat, cast a quick glance in the rearview mirror but didn’t turn around. “Check your six, General. The beige sedan, three cars behind us? They’re after you. I’m trying to lose them.”

  Terrific! A conspiracy nut! Next he’d confess that he got this intel from the Cigarette-Smoking Man in an underground parking lot.

  Could this day possibly get any worse?

  Then again… As instructed, Hammond checked his six. Sure enough, there was a beige, government-issue sedan three cars behind, and while this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in DC, its driver did look a little more intense than the rush-hour traffic warranted. The guy next to him was talking into a cell phone.

  Hammond settled back into the seat. “Who the devil are you?”

  This time the cabby did turn, grinning broadly and revealing a sturdy set of teeth with a pronounced gap between the upper incisors. “We’ll chat soon, but right now you don’t wanna distract the driver.”

  With that he goosed the engine to 70 mph, nearly clipped the rear bumper of a black Lexus in front, cut right across an eighteen-wheeler that tooted Beethoven’s Fifth on its horn, and shot over three lanes onto the ramp for Custis Memorial Boulevard. The beige sedan missed the exit and drove on straight, its co-pilot gesticulating furiously.

  At least Hammond’s question had been answered. The day had got worse. By a considerable margin. He was trapped in a speeding cab, steered by a convicted traitor, rogue agent, and con artist. On the upside, this promised to be more diverting than tomorrow morning’s role play exercise. The cab was out on the 1-66 now and doing 80 mph.

  Thirty-five minutes later they were passing Dulles International, and his chauffeur finally slowed down a little to retrieve a sports bag from under the passenger seat. He slid open the partition and shoved the bag into the rear.

  “I suggest you change, General. It’ll attract less attention than a dress uniform. I won’t peek, I swear.”

  The bag contained a pair of jeans, trodden-down sneakers, a windbreaker, and, to Hammond’s dismay, the man’s f
avorite fashion statement, an unbearably lurid Aloha shirt.

  It’ll attract less attention?

  By the time he’d zipped the windbreaker up to his neck to tamp down the effect of the shirt, they were pulling into the parking lot behind a seedy truck stop.

  “Now are we safe to talk?” Hammond snapped.

  His chauffeur backed the cab into a slot beside a forty-foot Winnebago. “Inside,” he said. “They do a great chocolate meringue pie. I’ve been looking forward to it all day.”

  Then he killed the engine, exchanged the ethnic headwear for a dozer cap, and got out of the cab. He was wearing grease-stained mechanic’s overalls to go with the hat. Climbing out, Hammond figured that dressing up as Bobo the Clown still beat running around like the Trucker King of Hicksville.

  A state cruiser parked directly outside the cafe, and as they ambled closer a trooper back-pushed and rotated through the door, balancing two cups of coffee on a box of donuts. It probably explained why they hadn’t been caught speeding.

  “I should just hand you over to them,” Hammond muttered angrily. “For reckless driving, if nothing else. You’re a menace, Maybourne.”

  “Please, General. I just saved your butt, and I’d prefer it if you called me Hutch. For, uh, personal reasons.” He shot a sideways glance at Hammond. “Maybe I should—”

  “Absolutely not! Whatever else happens, you will not call me Huggy Bear. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Just a thought.”

  “Do the world a favor and stop thinking!”

  The interior of the cafe lived down to expectation; dark and dingy, with the smell of old fries thick in the air and Formica tables stuck between tattered red seats. They also were out of chocolate meringue pie, as George Hammond noted in a bout of petty satisfaction. Maybourne had picked a booth at the back of the room, directly under an antique speaker that hissed and drooled country music between the static. A waitress brought two mugs of coffee and a plate of apple pie—runner-up, going by Maybourne’s face.